


Happy Endings

by orphan_account



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:08:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27555106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "This is the way you left me, I'm not pretendingNo hope, no love, no glory, no happy endingThis is the way that we love, like it's foreverThen live the rest of our life, but not together"- Mika, Happy Endings
Relationships: Jake Peralta & Amy Santiago, Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7





	Happy Endings

**November 13, 2030**

"Slow down, Mac, what have I told you about running on the street?," Jake told his son. 

"That I shouldn't do it, but I want to anyway," Mac retorted back. Jake let him have ice cream, so that's probably what did the trick. Mac's all hyper now.

But it's okay. Jake sees Amy and Marcus down the street. Usually, Jake and Samantha would drop Mac over at Amy's house but she and Marcus were going out to dinner and hoped Mac would join them. Jake already knew why—Amy had done him the courtesy of letting him know before the world did, but she and Marcus were newly engaged. The two lovebirds were going to use dinner to tell Mac.

"Okay, buddy, you see mommy? Run to her, okay, straight line," Jake says. He isn't excited about it, but that's co-parenting. Pretending to be happy about the news Mac's about to hear. He is, partially, but also partially sad. Amy's about to tell someone else they're the right person for her, that she wants to spend her life with them. 

"Okay!," Mac yells, already in full sprint.

****************************************

"Hey, Jake," Amy says when he catches up to his feisty ten-year old. 

"Hi, Amy," Jake says. "Marcus," he says, extending his hand, which Marcus accepts. Jake takes note of how muscular he is, as he does each time they shake hands. Surely he should only get one, right, be muscular or handsome, not both? But Amy could get anyone, so of course she'd find the best of the bunch.

Jake snaps himself out of that train of thought quickly enough—if he does feel jealous, it's fleeting, and he's grateful for that. People only feel jealous when they're not happy themselves, and Samantha planned a Die Hard marathon for them tonight, so all things considered he's pretty damn happy.

"Should we go inside, baby?," Amy asked Mac.

"Don't call me baby," Mac says. "I don't like that."

"Oh, shush," Amy says, ushering him inside. 

"Wait, actually, Ames, can you spare a few minutes. I have to talk to you about something," Jake says.

"Uh, yeah, sure," Amy says, gesturing to Marcus to take Mac inside and she'll be there shortly. Her and Jake park themselves on a nearby bench.

*************************************

"So, Mac was telling me about school today. I guess the kids pressured Ms. Silverspring to do her own show and tell after the kids did and she brought in her husband and son and Mac said he asked them whether her husband was also the kid's father, and................"

"Oh god," Amy interrupted. "He shouldn't have asked that." 

Jake laughs. "Absolutely not, no, but anyways when he came home he did ask me, you know, why the two of us weren't still married and, you know," Jake kind of scratches the back of his neck nervously as he says this, "why didn't mom and dad love each other?"

Amy looks down. She knew this type of conversation would come eventually, but she didn't want it to be so soon. "And what did you say?"

"I didn't," Jake said. "I told him we were late to see you"—Amy smirks and looks at him knowingly, because that much was certainly true—"and I bribed him with ice cream." Jake and Amy share a laugh. "I don't know if I needed to check in with you first, but I imagine we'll get this question again after today, and I guess before we explain romance to our son maybe we should be on the same page."

"Thanks for waiting," Amy said, as the conversation officially entered what was sure to be awkward terrain. "What do you want to tell him?"

"I mean, I want to tell him to believe in fairy tales. That true love is out there, that you'll meet your soulmate and the two of you will want each other forever," Jake says ruefully. It sounds so childish to say those words out loud now, but he believed them once upon a time. More specifically, 2014-2020, the six years Amy and him were together. "But I also don't want to set the precedent of lying to my son. About something important, not like Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy."

"You don't believe in true love?," Amy asks.

"Oh come on, don't look at me like that," Jake says. "You don't either. We once thought we were 'true love,' and I think it's safe to say something went sideways there. I'm proud of us for remaining friends, for being amicable, but TRUE love?"

"Fair enough, fair enough," Amy says. She supposes it's everyone's gut reaction to believe in true love. Maybe because she just got engaged. But even she knows life is messier than that—she's been engaged before. You can forget divorce is a possible ending during the first marriage. It'd be the height of ignorance to pretend divorce isn't a possibility the second time. 

"I mean, I know we loved each other," Jake says, continuing. "I just....when I try to think about how I'd explain love to Mac, which I was thinking about all the walk over here, I struggle to. I thought I knew what it meant, right, like that feeling of not wanting to be with anyone else. But realistically we loved each other and it hasn't stopped us from enjoying sex with new people, or wanting to spend time with new people, or doing any of the things we used to do with each other with new people. From forgetting each other. I mean, not entirely, but I don't know how many memories we'll have fresh of each other 5 years, ten years, 30 years from now?"

"At the end of the day we spent six years together and will spend eight times that amount apart. I can't think of a satisfactory explanation of love for our son that doesn't strip it of all magic whatsoever, because I see all the things it couldn't prevent. We talk about it like it's exclusive, but whether someone has an affair"—Jake pauses, he's healed from that and doesn't want to revisit the memory—"or just move on, it really isn't."

Amy starts to talk, but Jake keeps going. He's a little offended, internally. Surely Amy hasn't forgotten how much he likes to monologue. 

"At the same time, you know, I remember the feeling," Jake said. "I remember it _felt_ magical and transcendent."

"It really did," Amy said, stealing a glance with Jake. She one-hundred percent probably shouldn't have, but she couldn't help it. It was a magical time, once upon a time.

"So you get it," Jake says. "Like, I know love is real and wonderful and great, and can sustain great relationships. But whenever I try to describe in my head true love as something magical, bigger than ourselves, it falls flat because I know it ends and it ebbs and nothing about the love you directed at one person means it won't be directed to someone else a month later. If true love is that feeling of not wanting to be with anyone else, that seems like a weak and flimsy definition for something that felt so great, you know?"

Amy nods. It's not like she's still heartbroken over the divorce, but in some ways that's sad too. That you don't feel sad a great relationship is over. Hell, and they're lucky it hasn't happened to them, that people can hate a relationship that they once held so dear. 

"Maybe love isn't something we're supposed to think about," Amy proposes. "Like, we focus on relationships and having good, supportive relationships, and if the relationship is going well, then there's love there, even if if you were to sit back and think about it there's a hollowness."

"Is that what you want to tell him? Hey, Mac, I know all the TV and Movies make true love out as something magical and transcendent and bigger than ourselves, but it really doesn't make any sense when you think about it?"

"Oh god, no, Jake!," Amy laughs. "I'm not trying to make him sad. You know what he's like when he's sad. He can pout for days. He gets that from you." 

Jake laughs. He 100 percent does. 

"No, I think we try and be honest with him. That true love, the thing everyone wants, that feeling of there's nobody else in the world they'd rather be with, it's an aspiration, but like most aspirations people don't always reach it. Like Holt and Kevin, they celebrated their 50th last week. We can point to them and tell Mac what true love is. And tell him to strive to meet someone and have that in your life. But if not, then there's still love out there. Like what we had. Except maybe that isn't TRUE in any real sense, because it ends and changes with the times."

Jake really likes that. "But it's still pretty great, huh," he says.

"It really was," Amy says. She extends her hand—"so, we agree on what to tell him?"

"Yeah, I think so." Jake gets up to leave. He's kept Amy from her dinner enough. "I'll pick Mac up next weekend."

**************************

Jake is a few feet away when he calls back to Amy as she goes into the restaurant.

"Yeah?," she asks, looking down to see if she dropped anything. 

"Congratulations," Jake says. They make eye contact and smile. The kind of "what could have been in another life had things come out differently" smile that you see in the movies, even though they both know their lives are going pretty well in this life too. 

"Thanks, Jake," Amy says. She goes into the restaurant for her and Marcus to share the news with Mac. Jake heads home, enjoying the cold New York air. He'll probably take the scenic route home to calm his mind. 

Because Amy and Marcus are in love, and so are Jake and Samantha, and their love might have ended but they're both happy. He doesn't know if that's a good thing or a sad thing, but the world keeps turning anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> As I reel from a couple I know breaking up, I offer you this. Because I don't actually think B99 would hurt them, I also don't believe love is as sacred as I wish it were, so this is me processing. Kind of just a one-shot reflection.


End file.
